Farming the Apartment

The Therapy of Gardening

There is nothing better than getting your hands in the dirt. Yesterday I finally settled in to a couple of hours of gardening. The first step was to sort through and organize everything– I had piles of pots, bags of soil and such things just laying around. Not exactly the look you want in your living room. Then I got down to the business of planting. I had four tomato transplants and a lemon rosemary plant to pot up. I decided to put two of the tomatoes into the Earthbox, with the remaining two going into my two largest round planters. The thyme went into the green porcelain planter where the doomed rosemary used to live. Setting up the Earthbox was quite easy. First, I covered up the drainage hole on the bottom with a double layer of plastic (recycled from one of the bags the accessories came in) and some tape. Since I’m using it indoors on carpet, I don’t want water draining everywhere. I’ll just have to be careful not to overwater it, but that shouldn’t be too difficult since I think it holds only about two gallons of water at a time. Then I popped in the rolling casters it came with (no tools necessary, and now I can easily move it about) and fitted the bottom screen into place (it holds the soil above the water). Then I dumped in the soil it came with, and was pleasantly surprised it came with about twice as much as the planter could hold. So I have leftovers for other plantings, which is great. I then mixed in 2 cups of dolomite into the top four inches of soil and fitted the included black plastic mulch over the top. I cut out two holes near the front of the container and settled two of the tomatoes in. I top-watered (just this once) to settle any air pockets in the soil near their roots, and it was done. Next, I emptied the old soil from the green pot and filled it up with the leftover Earthbox soil. No amendments into this container, so I just planted the lemon thyme right in and gave it a good water. I finished up by planting seeds for two varieties of lettuce, sunflowers, kale and edamame. But the time those get to tranplantable size, I’ll have a small collection of wine crates to plant them in, and I think they’ll look really good in the living room. I felt much better after spending time farming– tomatoes in the sun smell so good! I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on their progress.